Azure wants to attract as many developers as possible

Why it matters: As we noted last week when Microsoft officially became the world's third most valuable company, Microsoft's recent growth is likely a result of their increased emphasis on non-windows services. One of those services is Azure, the company's cloud computing platform. Microsoft will soon offer Azure virtual machines with ultra-high memory capacities, a move that could attract an entirely new set of developers to the platform.

Microsoft's explosive growth recently earned them the honor of being the world's third most valuable company with a $749 billion market cap.

This growth could be attributed to many factors, but the company's Azure cloud computing platform is likely chief among them.

Azure allows developers to build and test applications of varying complexity through the use of virtual machines, but it hasn't been the best option for apps that have particularly high memory demands.

That's changing today. As reported by TechCrunch, Microsoft will soon launch virtual machines with a whopping 12TB of memory.

If 12TB is a bit too much for your needs, Microsoft will also offer virtual machines with 192 GB of memory.

If speed is your priority, but you can't afford to take advantage of Microsoft's "premium SSDs," the company will also be offering virtual machines with "Standard SSDs." As the name implies, these SSDs are slightly slower, but more affordable, alternatives to Microsoft's premium SSDs.

It's not clear when these new machines will be available to Azure customers, nor is it clear how much they'll cost. However, we'll likely learn more about them in the coming weeks.